Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich

Meylikh Gershenzon was born in the provincial city of Chisinau to the family of Pinhus-Joseph Leibovich (Joseph Lvovich) Gershenzon, a small businessman and private attorney from the city of Litin , and Gitli Yankelevna (Golda Yakovlevna) Tsysina ^{[6] [7]} . From 1875 he studied at the heder , then at the private Chisinau Jewish public school of Blumenfeld, in 1887 he graduated from the first Chisinau state gymnasium . According to M. A. Tsyavlovsky , Gershenzon’s grandfather, Jacob Tsysin, he saw Pushkin as a teenager walking in the city garden of Chisinau, about which he later told his little grandson ^[8] .

The father wanted to give his two sons an education that would provide them with material independence. He sent the eldest son Abram to Kiev to study as a doctor, and the youngest to Berlin Technical University to study as an engineer. Two years (1887–1889) M.O. Gershenzon studied honestly, but as a result he only came to the conclusion that this career was not for him. He began to listen to the lectures of the historian G. von Treichke and the philosopher E. Zeller at the University of Berlin .

Finally, in the summer of 1889, Gershenzon returned to Chisinau and announced his determination to receive a humanitarian education. My father was categorically against it, since such an education opened up only two possibilities for a further career: teaching at a university or teaching at a gymnasium, and both were then forbidden to Jews. In addition, the admission itself was problematic due to the harsh rate of admission of Jews, and Gershenzon did not even receive a gold medal at the end of the gymnasium. Nevertheless, he sent a petition to Petersburg, to the Ministry of Education. This attempt was not obviously hopeless, because the then Minister, Count Delyanov , conscientiously implementing the “protective” measures , often helped individuals who were affected by these measures. Indeed, the ministry ordered the enrollment of Mikhail Gershenzon in the first year of the historical department of the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University .

Thus, the student life of M. Gershenzon in Moscow began in extreme poverty, with constant learning of lessons. At the university, he listened to lectures by V.I. Guerrier on modern history, P.G. Vinogradov on the history of Greece, F.E. Korsch in classical philology, N. Ya. Grot and M.M. Troitsky in psychology, V.O. Klyuchevsky on Russian history, M. S. Korelina on the ancient history of the Semitic East. S. I. Sobolevsky conducted practical classes in the ancient Greek language. Gershenzon also attended several lectures by I.M.Sechenov on physiology and S.S. Korsakov on psychiatry.

Gershenzon's classmate turned out to be another native of Chisinau, Nikolai Borisovich Goldenweiser (1871-1924), who remained his closest friend until the end of his life. By that time, the whole family of Goldenweisers had moved to Moscow: father, Boris Solomonovich Goldenweiser (1838-1916), a well-known lawyer, mother, Varvara Petrovna, younger brother Alexander and two sisters, Tatyana and Maria. M. Gershenzon quickly became his man at the Goldenweisers.

In December 1893, Gershenzon was awarded a gold medal for the composition “ Athenian Politics of Aristotle and the Plutarch’s Biography ”, written on the initiative and under the guidance of P. G. Vinogradov. He hoped on the basis of this medal to achieve for Gershenzon if not leaving at the university, then at least a business trip abroad to continue his education, but none of this was possible ^[9] .

Until the end of his life, Gershenzon earned his bread by literary work. His first published text was a note on the Chinese Ming Dynasty in the Pomegranate Desktop Encyclopedic Dictionary (1893); it was followed by other minor articles in this dictionary. In 1894, his review of the books of N. I. Kareev was published (without a signature) in the journal Russian Thought .

In 1896, the newspaper “ Russian Vedomosti ” published 30 of his notes on various topics, mainly book reviews. This activity continued in subsequent years, albeit with less intensity. For Gershenzon, the main source of income during this period was translations, including books “Stories about Greek heroes compiled by B. G. Niebuhr for his son”, “History of Greece” ^{[10] by} Yu. Belokh , three volumes from the multi-volume “ General History ” Lavisse and Rambo . He also acted as editor of translations, in particular, E. Meyer 's monograph “Economic Development of the Ancient World”; the publication of this book met obstacles from censorship and was delayed for years.

From his student years, Gershenzon was friends with V. A. Maklakov and S. P. Moravsky , also students of Vinogradov. During his work on the “Athenian Politics” of Aristotle, he talked a lot with M. M. Pokrovsky , of whom there was an extremely high opinion: “One evening spent with him enriches me for more than a year of university lectures.” ^[11] From mid-1890 Gershenzon was friends with S. H. Bulgakov , a graduate of the law faculty of Moscow University.

In 1893, philanthropist Elizaveta Nikolaevna Orlova ^[12] (1861-1940) initiated the creation of the Home Reading Commission , which aimed to promote the self-education of the poor. The commission published reading programs, sent books, and directed reading. P. G. Vinogradov became a member (and later chairman) of the commission. He drew Gershenzon to her work, which as a result published a number of translations and his own texts on the problems of education and upbringing. The writing of a popular essay on Petrarch (1899), later revised into an introductory article to the collection of translations (1915), is associated with the same work. Acquaintance with Orlova grew into a long-standing friendship and played a huge role in the life of Gershenzon.

Friendly relations with the sister of Nikolai Goldenweiser Maria turned into a romantic, but the marriage between the Orthodox Maria Goldenweiser and the Jew Meilich Gershenzon was impossible under the laws of the Russian Empire. Since 1904, they simply began to live together as a family. B. S. Goldenweiser did not approve of this decision, believing that Gershenzon could have been baptized, since it happened so. ^{[13] The} children of Gershenzonov - sons Alexander (who died in infancy), Sergey and daughter Natalia - were listed as “illegitimate children inscribed in the passport of the Goldenweiser girl” ^[14] . By 1914, Russian legislation had become more tolerant: Orthodox Christians could go into other Christian confessions, and heterodoxes could marry Jews. Maria Borisovna became a Lutheran , and they were married according to the Lutheran rite.

In 1908 or 1909, Orlova settled Gershenzonov in her household in Nikolsky Lane near Arbat, first in a wooden wing and then in a new house (No. 13), built in 1912 by architect Ivanov-Shits . In the same house she settled herself with her mother, and later her sister, who was married to S. A. Kotlyarevsky . Having lost all her fortune as a result of the October Revolution (although happily avoiding any kind of repression), Orlova continued to live with the Gershenzons as a family member until her death, earning drawing lessons and languages, and later selling her own paintings.

Having become a famous writer and scholar, Gershenzon did not break with everyday journalism until the Bolsheviks closed all independent newspapers and magazines. He was the editor of the literary department of the journals Scientific Word, Critical Review (since 1904), and Vestnik Evropy (1907–08). In 1913 he published 18 notes on various topics under the pseudonym "Junior" in the newspaper " Russian Rumor ". In 1914-1916, he was actively published on general and literary topics in the newspaper " Vedomosti Vedomosti ".

Shortly before the revolution, Gershenzon became close friends with the Symbolists Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely , who devoted many warm pages to him in the last volume of his memoirs ^[15] . In 1920, when “both philosophers lay in two corners of the same hospital room, in the most terrible days of the Bolshevik devastation” ^[16] , a correspondence arose between Ivanov and Gershenzon about the fate of culture after the revolutionary breakdown, published under the title “Correspondence of two angles. " A verbal portrait of Gershenzon can be found in Olga Forsh's book Crazy Ship :

“His wonderful conversation about the Slavophiles with a kind of choking and gorgotany made him not a Russian writer, but some kind of Chaldean magician, lost in our snows. The eastern features showed sharper from the disease, not from the Old Testament, but rather from the Thousand and One Nights: the line of allied eyebrows on a beautiful white forehead was mentally complemented with a turban. Towards the end of his life, a special joy came from him, and there was a feeling that he had received something without fail and was in a hurry to hand out. He laughed well, with a choke, barging with a child's throat and witty instead of the instructive lessons that people are so greedy for. ”

After the February Revolution - Chairman of the All-Russian Union of Writers . In 1920-21, a member of the Bureau of the Literary Department of the People 's Commissariat for Education , a member of the board of the 4th section of the Glavarchive, and since 1921 he was the head of the literary section of the State Academy of Art Sciences .

Died at the age of 55 from chronic tuberculosis . He was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery (11 sch.). Judging by the recollections, the death of Gershenzon made a heavy impression on the connoisseurs of Russian culture, and the writer Alexandra Chebotarevskaya ( Anastasia 's sister), having run away from the funeral, drowned the same day ^[17] .

Gershenzon’s first scientific publication was the student work “ Aristotle and Efor ”, awarded the Isakov Prize in 1893 and printed at the expense of the university in 1894 under the same cover as V.A. This work was answered by a review, in particular, by V.P. Buzeskul . In 1895, Moscow University, again at its own expense, published Gershenzon's second student work, “Athenian Politics of Aristotle and the Plutarch’s Biography” . He did not conduct any more research work in Greek history or in classical philology.

Since the late 1890s, he began to study the family archives of prominent noble families of Moscow, studied the movement of the Decembrists and the legacy of A. I. Herzen , N. P. Ogaryov , Westerners and Slavophiles from 1830-1840.

In 1909, he initiated the publication (as well as the author of the introduction) of the collection “ Milestones ”, which brought together significant representatives of Russian philosophical thought: N. A. Berdyaev , S. H. Bulgakov , S. L. Frank and others ( see. ) Mikhail Gershenzon summarized his impressions of a series of bloody " Black-Hundred " pogroms during the First Russian Revolution of 1905-07 with the following words:

From the beginning of the 1910s, he concentrated on the publication of literary and historical materials, especially for which he published the collections “Russian Propylaea” (1915-1919, 6 volumes) and “New Propylaea” (1923). In collaboration with the Moscow Religious and Philosophical Society, he published the collected works of I. V. Kireevsky (1911, 2 volumes) and P. Ya. Chaadayev (1913-1914, 2 volumes), participated in the development of the series “Monuments of World Literature” (from 1911) .

After the Beilis case , he began to collaborate with the magazine "Jewish World", published a work on the Jewish poet XH Bialik (1914), a preface to a collection of Russian translations from his close friend V. F. Khodasevich and L. B. Jaffe (1875-1948) new Hebrew poetry “Jewish Anthology” (Safrut Publishing House, Moscow, 1918), in 1922 - philosophical essays “Key of Faith” and “Fates of the Jewish People”, in which Zionism opposed the idea of ​​universalism of the Jewish spirit.

Throughout his life, Gershenzon composed poems; several poems were published in the journals New Word (1897) and Russian Thought (1913, 1915).

• Brother - Abram (Boom) Osipovich Gershenzon (1868-1933), pediatrician and health organizer, one of the founders of the Odessa Society of Children's Doctors; his son, writer and literary critic Mikhail Abramovich Gershenzon (1900-1942).
• Wife - Maria Borisovna Gershenzon (nee Goldenweiser; 1873, Chisinau - 1940, Moscow), sister of pianist A. B. Goldenweiser .
  • Son - Sergey Mikhailovich Gershenzon (1906-1998), geneticist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR .
  • Daughter - Natalia Mikhailovna Gershenzon-Chegodaeva (1907, Moscow - 1977, Moscow), Soviet art critic, wife of art critic, professor Andrei Dmitrievich Chegodaev (1905-1994).
    • Granddaughter - Maria Andreevna Chegodaeva (1931–2016), art critic, full member of the Russian Academy of Arts .

• Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Gershenzon-Chegodaeva N. M. The First Steps of the Life Path. S. 11-264.
• Goldenweiser A. B. Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon. S. 6-10.
• Mezhuev B.V. Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich // Russian Philosophy. Encyclopedia. / Under the total. ed. M.A. Maslin . - M.: Algorithm , 2007. - P. 121-123.
• Mikhail Gershenzon in the memories of his daughter. - M .: Zakharov , 2000. ISBN 5-8159-0041-9
• Proskurina V. Yu. Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich // Culturology. XX century. Encyclopedia. - M., 1998.
• Puchkov A. A. "By the way, think about whether you can help ...". Letters of M. O. Gershenzon and two philosophical treatises by Aleksei Fedorovich Selivyachev (1912-1919) // Current problems of restoration, restoration and preservation of cultural recession. Zbіrnik naukovyh prac from mystical exaltation, architectural knowledge and cultural studies. Vipusk third. Partina friend. - K .: Vidavnichy dim A + C, 2006. - S. 170—174.
• Khodasevich V.F. Gershenzon. // Vladislav Khodasevich. Necropolis. - M .: Vagrius . 2001.S. 90-98. ISBN 5-264-00160-X
• Chegodaeva M. A. Comments on the memories of my mother. S. 265-283.
• Gershenzon, Mikhail Osipovich / Yurchenko T. G. // Hermaphrodite - Grigoryev [Electronic resource]. - 2007. - S. 26-27. - (The Big Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vols.] / Ch. Ed. Yu. S. Osipov ; 2004—2017, vol. 7). - ISBN 978-5-85270-337-8 .

Collected Works

Michael Gershenzon. Favorites. (Russian Propylaea) - M .; Jerusalem: University Book; Gesharim , 2000.

• Volume 1. The wisdom of Pushkin. ISBN 5-7914-0035-7
• Volume 2. Young Russia. ISBN 5-7914-0025-X
• Volume 3. Images of the past. ISBN 5-7914-0035-7
• Volume 4. The triple image of perfection. ISBN 5-7914-0035-7

• Works of M.O. Gershenzon on the website of the Tver Diocese